EVENTS

Within the Catholic moral tradition

Interjection: what the hell is “Catholic health”? I know, that’s not what they mean, it’s just the name of a publication of the CHUSA, the Catholic Health Association of the US. But that’s stupid too. We’re deadened to all this because of habituation. We’re used to it so we don’t notice how ridiculous it is, let alone how dangerous it is. Catholic health? Catholic health care? What the hell, man? There is no such thing. Health is health, it isn’t Catholic or Jewish or Baptist. Health care is health care, it isn’t Lutheran or Muslim or Hindu.

Well I can think of some possible ones – like what to do about a woman who wants to risk her life to try to save a fetus that can’t be saved, or even a woman who wants to give up her life to try to save a fetus that can’t be saved. That might be a complex ethical question, because there’s an intuition that it should be her decision, but it has to be horrible to let someone die when you know you could save her.

But that of course is not the kind of complex ethical question they have in mind at CHUSA.

They offer hypotheticals. This one for instance –

A second fictitious case concerned a mother at 15 weeks’ gestation whose fetus is missing part of its brain. The baby will almost certainly die within days of birth. The physician recommends that the mother terminate the futile pregnancy to avoid the psychological distress of carrying a nonviable baby to term.

Slosar said that, applying directive 47, this termination would not be justified because the mother’s life is not at risk — the condition only affects the health of the baby. Also, the reason for the termination — to relieve the psychological burden to the mother — is not considered proportionate to the effect of the act, that is, the death of the baby, within the Catholic moral tradition.

How hateful. The “psychological distress” is grief for the baby and the futility of it all. The stinking CHUSA makes it sound selfish and callous. What good does it do the baby to have a few days outside the uterus? The Catholic moral tradition is brutal.

I’m not Catholic. Hell religion has never been a big thing for me although I did go to church sporadically as a child/teenager. Can someone clarify this for me.

Is this all about soul mining? You know, baby has to be born so it can be splashed with holy water in time for it to die so it’s soul will go to heaven. In a kind of perverted way that would make sense (if you stay locked in mind set centuries old) as the important thing is not preserving life, or quality of life, or keeping the emotional, mental and physical well being of the mother and family foremost. The important thing would be harvesting souls for God. If the mother ends up dying as well, meh, God gets both souls.

Poor Savita and her baby get caught up in this, even though they are not Christian and I guess don’t have souls amenable to harvesting under the rulz, because of the rigid framework of ‘ethics’ that has accreted around this issue over the centuries.

I have long suspected that the Church preached against suicide and euthanasia so strongly because if you had a glorious afterlife that was love, beauty and peace forever, but a real life that was grinding work, hardship, violence and disease the serf class would have emptied out pretty rapidly. people were property and property had to be protected. Easier to have rigid catch-all rules than humane case by case evaluation.

It’s a great shame that the wonder of so much religious music, art and architecture etc through the ages isn’t matched by the ideology.

@Rob, i really think it is about ritual purity, since they dont care if the babies live to be born & baptised, the only thing that matters is that a doctor not cut them dead wo a plausible deniablity…..

In the hypothetical, the Catholics treat neither the woman nor the fetus like a person or a human being. Rather they are both pawns in a game of ideological purity, which makes the whole enterprise inhumane and seriously depraved.

This baby has trisomy 13
A short and painful death after birth
These brave, moral people, chose not to abort
Instead, they chose the moral, godly thing, which was to let the baby slowly suffer to death over five days
And these wonderful people filmed it for all christians to enjoy

from the commments:

Tomsky Esquejo · Mataderos, Distrito Federal, Argentina
Most tough decisions are made “out of love” which later produces profound “authentic” joy. As a priest, I thank you, T.K. and Deidrea, for this wonderful testimony and example you have given. Accept my humble prayers for you both, Thomas and your baby girl!

Kim Blakely-YellowHorse · Metropolitan State College of Denver
I am truly amazed by the bravery of these parents. Pure, unselfish, completely awe inspiring love that they gave to Thomas.

Tegan Ann Sullivan Woodfill · Subscribe · Madison, Indiana
I love that you guys showed him so much love. he died knowing you love him and always will.

Gail Burroughs · Works at I AM A FULL TIME GRANDMOTHER
That precious angel could not have had 2 more wonderful parents! Even though his little life was way too short, it was filled with more love than a lot of children receive in a lifetime!

Karen Duncan · Marketing at ASM
I feel so sorry for those parents. God Bless them. That poor baby, so sweet, so innocent showed them the true meaning of love. God is Awesome!

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more children had such unselfish, loving parents? Here I sit, wishing I had been tortured to death as a newborn, but apparently god, and my parents, did not love me nearly enough!

Ok, so I’m woefully ignorant of Catholic theology, but I really don’t get where the ‘purity’ bit comes in. Frankly for once I find myself thinking ignorance is bliss. If anyone can explain where purity fits into this in a short form, please fire away. Otherwise just go uuuggggghhhhh and leave it at that.

In the last couple of months I’ve gone from viewing the RC Church (as opposed to it’s adherents) as a tasteless anachronism to an evil that should be regarded as a crime against humanity. It ranks right up there with a religion that supports chopping little girls genitals apart.

@Rob what improbable Joe said, they didnt compromise w evil & take the ‘easy way” so their hands are clean, their consciences are clear, they stayed true to God’s law not mans weak sinful ways & didnt kill a helpless baby in the name of ‘lesser evil’ ….read those comments, you will see it all there….

@Rob in fact, i think, we may have the explnation for the mystery of why they delayed antibiotics, something that the prolifers are jumping on, bc that wld mean it was just ‘malpractice, not catholic doctirne….they think….at the largest teaching hospital in w ireland!!

….but if the patient has an in fection we see above that makes it okay to treat, bc yr not inducing a fetus, just treating an infection of the uterus….like the way they pretend the fallopan tubes damaged, itself, & needs to be removed, instead of just extracting the embryo….clean hands of baby murder!!

….so they cld have thought they were doing her a favor by letting her get an inrection, moving the window up, when they were allowed to induce labor & not have it be an abortion, by their own moral code…. i dont know if that was the strategy but it fits all the external evidence, we have, so far….

” “The near death of a mother of four offers no such pleasures for them.”

Of course it doesn’t offer any damn pleasure for us. It’s a tragedy.

Tragedies happen. People die. We should try to prevent them. But we cannot do so by immoral means. Morality requires logic, not just doing what feels right, or is less likely to make you cry at night. Don’t be too quick to dismiss the moral systems you disagree with, especially the ones that survived for many centuries. If they were as obviously broken as some of you seem to think, they would have fallen apart long ago.”

rob #4 “I have long suspected that the Church preached against suicide and euthanasia so strongly because if you had a glorious afterlife that was love, beauty and peace forever, but a real life that was grinding work, hardship, violence and disease the serf class would have emptied out pretty rapidly. people were property and property had to be protected. Easier to have rigid catch-all rules than humane case by case evaluation.”

Yep. The RCC also preached celibacy because they got annoyed when dead priests willed their riches to their family, and not the church. It all comes down to power, prestige, and MONEY.

The RCC has never given a shit about it’s followers. Its nothing more than a welfare system for the rich and powerful. And if you can convince people that suffering is a good thing, you can exploit them.

rob #9 “Ok, so I’m woefully ignorant of Catholic theology, but I really don’t get where the ‘purity’ bit comes in. Frankly for once I find myself thinking ignorance is bliss. If anyone can explain where purity fits into this in a short form, please fire away. Otherwise just go uuuggggghhhhh and leave it at that.”

I have heard another theory. GUILT. We all know how the RCC operates. Tell people they are sinful bags of shit, then offer them the carrot of redemption and heaven.

How do they keep the bums in the seats? Well, everyone is gonna have sex right? Everyone is gonna want to have sex, and will have sex, even if you teach them ‘abstinence only’ education. They are gonna do it. And then, they are gonna be filled with guilt and self-hate. This is a nifty way of keeping people coming back to the church for salvation.

Make one of the most *natural* things that human beings do a SIN, tell them not to do it, watch them do it, then reap the benefits of all these sinners begging for salvation.

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#14 “@bobo did you see about how if you have an ectopic pregnancy growing in yr liver, you are sol at a cAtholic hospital??”

OK I get what you’re saying intellectually, but to be able to process and rationalise this you would have to have a mind so heavily compartmentalised that you essentially take everything in your life on faith rather than thinking about it for yourself. The dissonance is too much for me.